Controversy Grows Over Sam Baker’s 8-Year Historic Record ‘Climb’ on Yosemite’s El Capitan

Climbing veterans have spoken out against a Colorado man who said he and his 8-year-old son. he climbed one of the most notoriously difficult rocks on Earth before the month. El Capitan is a 3,000-foot granite rock formation in Yosemite National Park that has challenged even some of the world’s best adult climbers. Joe Baker made several references to “scaling it” with his son, Sam, with CNN even though the 8-year-old boy established a “climbing record” last week. Good Morning America followed. However, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the pair used a technique previously used by a 10- and 9-year-old boy for climbing. This technique, according to the Chronicle, uses “special hand grips that allow him to ascend a rope without touching the rock, a very different experience from traditional climbing.” The claim led members of Yosemite’s climbing community to criticize the couple. “This is a publicity stunt,” said climbing expert and “unofficial recorder” Tom Evans. Chronicle. He told the newspaper that he watched the couple’s ascent and “did not see either the son or the father attempt to put their hands on the rock and physically climb the face”, while also noting that they used guides that they fixed the lines for the Bakers to “jug up”. “, a term used to describe the ascending technique. The Baker family did not respond to requests for comment from the Chronicle but dad Joe has notably stopped using references to ‘ladder’ in his social media posts, instead claiming that Sam had ‘completed the the youngest rope climber by ElCap.